The Do's and Don'ts of Social Media Marketing

Social media is no longer the destination purely for selfies and funny videos, for businesses social media is now a powerful piece of the marketing puzzle enabling brands to boost awareness of their products and services, drive traffic and generate conversions. 

Like everything, the channel comes with the good, the bad and the ugly - throw in the ever changing trends and new algorithms and there’s a lot to contend with. Knowing what to do and equally as important, what not to do, can be crucial to your success. 

Our Paid Social experts have outlined their key learnings for social media marketing below:

 
The do’s:

Understand who your audience is
Knowing your audience is key to getting the results you’re aiming for. Understanding what users are seeing your ads on each platform means you can tailor your content to resonate with each audience, ultimately improving performance!

Delving deeper to identify why your audience actually needs your product can help direct your content creation and really ‘speak’ to them. If you don’t understand the ins and outs of your audience you risk wasting your budget showing ads to those who simply won’t engage with your content.

Going into any campaign build blindly benefits no one. Think about factors such as campaign objectives, targeting and creative type, and how you will navigate your target audience through the conversion funnel.

Consider a budget for advertising 
Organic social is great for connecting with those already loyal enough to follow your brand, but when it comes to actually tapping into your ideal target audience, quickly and efficiently, Paid Social takes the crown.

Put a side budget for running paid campaigns on the platforms you have identified are most used by your target customers. A budget for paid ads brings a bucket load of benefits to your brand, including a wealth of data and insights, granular targeting across everything from demographics to interests, and the chance to increase brand awareness among those most likely to engage with your products/offering.

Invest in your content creation, content is *KING* afterall
People spend a LOT of time on social media, it’s becoming more of a natural action now… For example our mornings look a little like this: wake up, check phone, check Instagram, maybe Facebook, head into a TikTok hole for longer than we should, get up and then go about our day (with a few more check-ins throughout the day…. and night).

With our attention spans being shorter than ever too, it’s super important that brands are pushing out quality, valuable content that their audience can relate to. The social space is flooded with ads, brands need to, and actually are starting to, invest a lot more in their creative strategy - your content is one of the things you have the most control over, it’s time to make it a priority. 

Learning from data and using your findings to make future decisions is SO important, never make presumptions! By delving into your data you can find out:

• When your audience is most likely to engage with your content
• Who is actually engaging with your posts or ads
• What content is performing best (what is generating the most clicks, engagements etc.)

It’s important to note that Meta may increase your CPC because your ad is not what your target audience wants to see. Knowing this information avoids wasting time and budget on content that isn’t working.

Bonus tip: Keep an eye on the competition… and the latest trends 
Social is hard to keep up with at times. New trends are emerging constantly, and being ahead of the curve is one way to get a head start on your competitors. Keep up to date with what others are doing and also be aware of trending content - be ready to jump on trends, especially with your organic content on the likes of TikTok and Instagram Reels. 

The don'ts:

Don’t think you have to be EVERYWHERE
It can be tempting to want a presence on every platform in the hope you will reach bigger audiences, or maybe because you feel you just have to. Advertising only where you see results and investing in those platforms is key.

Yes, it is important to test new channels but before you jump head first into multiple platforms think about the following: do you have the time and resources to stay consistent with publishing regular quality content? Do you have a budget for testing? Is your audience on that platform? Do your research first and justify increasing resources and budget. 

Testing should be your best friend. We love it (if you’ve read any of our other blogs you will know we harp on about this quite a lot!). Try to keep some of your budget aside to test new things because what worked for you previously may not work for you again, and you could be missing a trick. 

For example, only using video content because you saw success in this in the past. By presuming this is all that works for you will likely limit your results. Remember to look around, see what everyone else is doing, do you need to push the boundaries a little with your content? Give it a go, or you will never see growth. 

Posting at the same time every day because it suits your schedule? Stop. Check when your audience are most active (via Insights) and test posting at different times of the day to see when is most successful - take advantage of scheduling tools, either through the platform itself or via a third party platform like Sprout Social, Hootsuite or Buffer (there’s stacks of options!).

Bottom line, keep testing new things, because social media is forever changing and your marketing efforts need to be changing with it, or you might get left behind.

Getting stuck on the same type of content is easily done. Don’t ignore features that allow you to reach your audience in new ways. Did you know that Reels are served to a wider public audience, and Stories are only served to your followers? Nope? You do now. 

Using these features boosts your chances of finding new audiences and connects with your current following with interactive and personal content. See it as an opportunity to add a personality to your brand and tell a story with your content, rather than focusing on hard selling your products all of the time. Build that brand trust, and become a brand that people can resonate with. 

91% of (surveyed) active Instagram users said they watch videos on Instagram at least once a week. This highlights the importance of video content and why not to ignore it! 

Don’t presume
I’m sure we’ve mentioned this already but we will tell you again… Don’t presume 🙂

Looking for inspiration from competitors is great, however, do not assume that because something works for another brand it will work for yours. This is why testing is so important so you can find out what does and doesn’t work for you. You may uncover a few surprises!

Don’t forget the basics, remember you’re representing your brand. Checking your grammar and spelling is suuuper important. Now, we are all human so we know mistakes do happen, that’s life, but just make a habit of checking all of your work before it goes live to prevent this from happening.

Another thing to check is your posting times and ad schedules. Are they aligned with promotions running? The time of day your target audience is most active? Triple check these in order to be sure no content is going out that’s either out of date so users are trying to access a promotion that’s past, or premature about a sale that isn’t yet live! Don’t disappoint a potentially engaged audience through lack of due diligence. 

Conclusion
No matter what, remember to loop back around to your objectives and goals set out at the start of your campaign. Make sure what you are serving to your consumers is relevant and represents your product or service accurately, and don’t forget to test where you can to ensure your creatives are keeping up with your audience needs.

Lastly, keep in mind that users head to social media to unwind or have fun - You too, have fun. Delve into your creatives and allow your ads to show the human side of your brand, you’ll begin to reap the benefits.

We're experts in driving real performance increases across sessions, engagement and revenue in the social accounts we manage - Don't just take our word for it, check out our recent work using the button below!